William R. Newland, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

William R. Newland

New Zealand artist

Date of Birth: 05-Feb-1919

Place of Birth: Masterton, Wellington Region, New Zealand

Date of Death: 30-Apr-1998

Profession: potter, ceramist

Nationality: New Zealand

Zodiac Sign: Aquarius


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About William R. Newland

  • William Rupert Newland (5 February 1919 – 30 April 1998) was a New Zealand born studio potter who lived in England after the Second World War. From 1945 to 1947 he studied painting at the Chelsea School of Art.
  • He studied art education at the Institute of Education from 1947 to 1948 where he learned pottery under Beth Wright, who sent him to the Central School of Art & Design in 1948.
  • There he studied ceramics under Dora Billington.
  • He taught evening classes in ceramics at the Central School of Art & Design from 1949 to 1965.
  • In 1949 he began a teaching career at the Institute of Education, where his students included James Tower, Nicholas Vergette and Margaret Hine.
  • Newland and Hine married in 1950.
  • He continued at the Institute until 1982, when he retired from teaching In 1949, Newland, Vergette and Hine visited Málaga in Spain where they saw tin-glazed earthenware.
  • In 1950, they set up a studio in London working in this medium, which was very different from the prevailing fashion for high-fired stoneware represented by Bernard Leach.
  • Their first exhibition included tiles and walls panels, as a result of which they were commissioned to decorate several coffee bars, which were then new and fashionable.
  • Newland and Hine decorated the Golden Egg chain of coffee bars and restaurants in the 1960s. As their work showed the influence of Picasso, Bernard Leach derisively called them "Picassoettes".
  • Picasso had been making tin-glazed pottery in the south of France since the end of the war.
  • In 1950 the Arts Council mounted an exhibition called "Picasso in Provence".
  • The potter Kenneth Clark described Picasso's influence on ceramics as follows: "During this period of change Picasso with his daring, invention, colour-sense and imagination, shattered and shocked the traditionalist potters with his experiments in ceramics.
  • ...
  • [H]e added fresh life and new direction to ceramics ...
  • " Newland himself said, "It wasn't that we were anti-Leach - but there were other things to do." Newland's style went out of fashion in the 1960s and most of his work for coffee bars has been lost.
  • There has been a recent revival of interest as evidenced by the references cited below.

Read more at Wikipedia

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